Book. “PPDA thought itself irresistible (…), he collected so many conquests that it seemed obvious that every woman wanted him. Here, there is no place for women’s consent. » When the author of the Black Prince writes these lines, there is no longer any doubt that he understood the infamous logic of the former presenter of the “20 hours” of TF1. So why did Romain Verley dispense with the advice of the PPDA accusers to reproduce their testimonies in his book?
Supported by several of her sisters in misfortune, one of the women who filed a complaint for rape against Patrick Poivre d’Arvor launched an urgent action for invasion of privacy the day before the book’s release, at the reason that what she had delivered to the police, and only to the police, was there in detail. The court dismissed it. These contextual elements color the reading of these more than 400 pages with an ambivalent feeling: if nothing justifies that a journalistic investigation cannot appear, nothing excuses breaches of the ethics of the profession either (the name of the plaintiff will however be withdrawn in the works in reprint).
nauseous dimension
The journalist exploits here, a second time, and on 414 pages, the work he had done for his documentary PPDA, the fall of an untouchablebroadcast in April 2022 in “Complément d’Enquête”, on France 2. The dozens of testimonies and the twenty-two complaints, including eleven for rape, against Patrick Poivre d’Arvor were well worth it, seems to tell us the author, who speaks in the first person (despite the effect of self-staging that this induces), to devote an investigation to their presumed author. In fact, the vertigo that the narrative produces is intact.
Using at will the image of the “prince” (” little Prince “, ” Prince Charming “, “Prince of TV”, “prince of the waves”, “narcissistic prince”…) to qualify him, Romain Verley rather precisely sketches the megalomaniac, manipulative and even lying star, as a number of well-known episodes of his life have repeatedly proven (the fake interview with Fidel Castro, the Botton affair, which earned a conviction for concealment of misuse of corporate assets). The portrait takes on a truly nauseating dimension when Romain Verley devotes himself to the exegesis of his multiple texts, with disturbing resonances with the facts of which Patrick Poivre d’Arvor is accused – which he denies en bloc.
As for the connections between the suicide of his daughter Solenn, anorexic, and the abuses of which women suffering from this pathology accuse him, we do not know how to welcome them. “You don’t have the right to love your daughter like that”, wrote Patrick Poivre d’Arvor. Certainly. But if appearances are overwhelming, letting the reader conclude for himself that a confession is perhaps hidden, no doubt, who knows, behind these words, leaves all the same a little pensive.
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